Archive for February, 2011

Audi A3 Winner Collects His Car

Friday, February 18th, 2011

Today MadBid joined auction winner Hugh to hand over his new car, the superb Audi A3.

Bidders flocked to the auction to try and win the car but Hugh was victorious last Monday.

Hugh’s Interview

How do you feel?

Ecstatic. It’s really, really too good to be true, really. It’s really, really good.

Was there a tough battle?

Very tough battle yes, but we’re cool and calculated.

So how did you find out about MadBid?

We found out about MadBid from the times newspaper about 3 years ago, roughly. Saw how someone won a mini for £30 or something and thought she’s going to try that and her dream was to win an apple Mac at that time.

How did you decide to go for the car?

Well we’ve looked at various cars and to be honest we have bid on a lot of cars or quite a few of the cars and we’ve been a bit unlucky on some of them, but this time we decided this was going to be our car. We wanted an Audi A3 so our plan worked out well – we watched the main bidders on it, we’ve logged main bidders, we’ve watched people all the while and were cool and calculated and come in towards the end of the auction or to where believed the auction would finish.

So when you first saw MadBid did you think the prices were too good to be true?

Well yes, when you first see something like that you obviously think there is a catch with it and you think there must be some kind of trick with it. But, what we realise now there is no trick to it; it’s a totally genuine site.

What are your tips to the newcomers?

Start at the bottom and look, just look, at the big auctions and see who’s bidding on there and get used to the bidders. But try and win something easy to start off with and maybe work your way up.

What are you currently driving?

We drive at the moment, we’ve got a Landrover Freelander which is a 4-wheel-drive vehicle and we live on top of a mountain so the Landrover is a pretty essential car for this really.

What would be your dream road trip with the new car?

Wow that’s a difficult one, but I used to work in South Africa so I think maybe if I could, I couldn’t afford it at the moment, is take it over to Africa or hire the same car in Africa and drive from Durban down to Cape Town on the eastern coast, follow the garden route down by car. Fantastic.

Why would that road trip be special?

Because the scenery and countryside in South Africa is second-to-none, it’s beautiful. Well, maybe second to Wales, but still very good.

Audi A3 Winner

Juha Koski, Madbid MD (pictured below with Hugh) was there to oversee the handover

Handing over the keys to the Audi A3

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What will the iPad 2 have in store for us?

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Rumours  always abound when it comes to Apple and new products and everyone is eagerly waiting the next product whether it’s the iPhone 5 or the iPad 2.

With only weeks to go till the expected unveiling of the iPad 2 and all the secrecy around it, it seems that everyone is speculating about the new features it will have.

Will there be two cameras, one at the front and one rear facing as on the iPhone 4? This would hopefully mean that iPad 2 users might have use of the excellent FaceTime video calling software developed by Apple for iPhone 4. Their rival tablet the Galaxy Tab already has two cameras – a rear-facing 3.2 megapixel camera and a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera for video chatting.iPad

Some others think there will be a USB port added but with Apple strongly headed towards wireless technology (the current iPad already has wireless printing) we are not sure whether these users will get their wish.

Also, at MadBid.com, we wonder if the new iPad will be smaller and slimmer, the current iPad has a screen size of 9.7 inches, but rivals the Galaxy Tab and, the soon to be released, Blackberry Playbook both have optioned for a smaller 7 inch screen. This difference means that tablets like the Galaxy Tab are significantly lighter at 0.84lbs instead of the iPad’s hefty 1.6lbs.

When I asked around the Madbid.com offices for what features we’d like to see we got a loud shout out for official support for Adobe Flash and an almost equally loud shout out for them to be cheaper – you’ll get the latter by bidding on MadBid.com soon!

Being expensive is not something the Madbid.com users have to worry about though as our prices of the first iPad show – it looks like some people will be getting a bargain! On average customers bought the iPad 32GB for £56.16 (plus cost of bids)!

We will be offering plenty more iPad’s this year so if you want join in the bidding then make sure you sign up for a MadBid.com account and check out our forthcoming auctions.

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Are Androids taking over the world?

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

And we don’t mean in a Blade Runner futuristic robot type of way, we’re talking about the Android Operating System that is taking the mobile world by storm.

The Operating System has been taken up by manufacturers such as LG, Samsung, Acer and HTC, with all of them experiencing excellent results.

Figures show that phones containing the Android platform have risen sharply in popularity as research firm Canalys revealed – Google’s Android has become the leading platform for smart phones with shipments of Android-based smart phones reached 32.9 million, while devices running the popular Nokia’s Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide.Galaxy Tab

The smart phone market continued to soar in the Q4 of last year, with shipments of 101.2 million units, which is an 89% growth from the same time last year.

With a whole host of phones and devices from the Galaxy Tab (aka Samsung P1000 Galaxy) to phones like the HTC Desire, HTC Legend, Samsung Galaxy, Google Nexus  and the Sony Ericsson X10 and more emerging every month and according to a report from DigiTimes, HTC will be releasing 3 new Android-based Tablets this year with the first reportedly being named ‘The Flyer’.

Here at MadBid.com we like to keep up-to-date with the latest technology and started offering the Android-based Galaxy Tab last year. One lucky auction winner purchased one for the bargain price of 26p (plus cost of bids)!

We will be offering more of these this year so if you want join in the bidding then make sure you sign up for a MadBid.com account and check out forthcoming auctions.

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